BUS272 TB

Chapter 8 Power and Politics 289
OB IN THE WORKPLACE
It’s Not About the Affair, It’s About the Coverup
Should an employee be fired for lying about a workplace affair? Bryan Reichard,
a 41-year-old married manager at Kitchener-based Kuntz Electroplating, had an affair
with one of the company’s administrative assistants. 63 She was single and 26.
In order to prevent sexual harassment lawsuits, Kuntz implemented a non-fraternization
policy, which specified that employees in romantic relationships needed to notify their
manager. Reichard was repeatedly asked if he was having an affair with the administrative
assistant, but he denied it. Kuntz did not forbid office relationships, so Reichard would
not have been disciplined for having a workplace affair.
However, Reichard was eventually terminated for lying about the affair. The decision
was appealed, and Kuntz’s decision to terminate Reichard was upheld. The judge hearing
the case gave his reasoning in his December 2011 judgment: “Kuntz had every right to
consider that Reichard’s wilful misconduct seriously called into question the trust, integrity
and honesty required for him to perform his duties as a manager and that Kuntz’s
lack of trust in Reichard was sufficient to terminate him for cause.”
In addition to its legal repercussions, sexual harassment obviously has a negative
impact on the work environment. Sexual harassment negatively affects job attitudes
and leads those who feel harassed to withdraw from the work (for example, avoiding
work, failing to attend scheduled meetings). In fact, perceptions of sexual harassment
are more likely than workplace bullying to lead to work withdrawal. 64 It also appears
that sexual harassment has health consequences. Women exposed to workplace sexual
harassment reported psychological distress two years after the harassment occurred. 65
Workplaces are not the only place where sexual harassment occurs. While nonconsensual
sex between professors and students is rape and subject to criminal charges,
it’s harder to evaluate apparently consensual relationships that occur outside the
classroom. There is some argument over whether truly consensual sex is ever possible
between students and professors. In an effort to underscore the power discrepancy and
potential for abuse of it by professors, in 2009 Yale University implemented a policy
forbidding romantic relationships between professors and undergraduate students. 66
Deputy Provost Charles Long explained the university’s decision: “I think we have a
responsibility to protect students from behavior that is damaging to them and to the
objectives for their being here.” Most universities have been unwilling to adopt such
an extreme stance, and it’s not clear that in Canada such a policy would stand up in
the courts. Carleton University does not prohibit relationships between individuals in
authority and those who are not, but does include the following statement in its sexual
harassment policy: “No individual in a position of authority is permitted to grade or
supervise the performance of any student, or evaluate an employee or a colleague, with
whom they are sexually involved or have been within the past five years.” 67
A recent study found that nearly two-thirds of university students experience some
type of sexual harassment, but most of these incidents go unreported. 68 However, much
of this harassment comes from student-on-student incidents. Matt Abbott, a student at
the University of New Brunswick, says that “certain aspects of sexual violence are almost
normal within the dating culture in campus communities.” Iain Boekhoff, the editorin-chief
of Western University’s Frosh issue of the Gazette , came under fire in August
2014 for publishing an article telling first-year students how to sexually harass their
teaching assistants (TAs). Boekhoff defended the article as being relatively tame. “Two
years ago it was just straight, ‘How to have sex with your TA,’ as one of the 50 or 100
things to do before you leave Western,” he said. 69 Is it any wonder, then, that University